Toon van Driel

Toon

(b. 16 February 1945, The Netherlands)

Toon van Driel was born Antonie Marcel van Driel in Amsterdam. He began his career at an advertising agency, but eventually became a steward with the KLM for three and a half-year. During the period of umemployment that followed, he created the soccer gag strip 'FC Knudde'. The series debuted in the newspaper Algemeen Dagblad in 1973. In a land where soccer rules, Toon scored an immediate hit with his dry humor about the best loser soccer players in the world. The quote "Tikkie terug, Jaap" is still a classic remark on soccer fields everywhere.

'Knudde' was also featured as a weekly half-page gag in the comics magazine Eppo from 1977, and as a continuing story in Nieuwe Revu the year after. When Van Driel sold the rights to his comic to publisher De Vrijbuiter in 1979, he left most of the artwork to his assistant Ray Nicholson. Today, the strip still runs in a couple of local papers from Limburg and Noord-Brabant. Van Driel has also commented on current affairs in the soccer world through his daily cartoon on the news site Nu.nl (since 2008) and with comic strips in free newspaper Metro.

Another one of Toon's famous creations is 'De Stamgasten', which premiered in Algemeen Dagblad five years after 'FC Knudde'. This funny animal series about a bunch of pub-crawlers provided enough material for solo careers of some of the individual characters, such as the clumsy lion 'Felis Leo' in Robbedoes and the gory joke-telling rabbit 'Ab Normaal' in Panorama.

Van Driel created a great variety of other series for Eppo and the subsequent magazines Eppo/Wordt Vervolgd and Sjors en Sjimmie Stripblad, such as 'De Stuntels' (1978-1979, with Jan van Haasteren), 'Rokus en de Rest' (1980-1985), 'Knetter' (1985-1987, under the pseudonym Glob) and 'Het Vreemdelingenlegioen' (1985-1994).

For the daily press, he did 'Hullie' in Algemeen Dagblad (as John Myshkin), as well as 'De Familie Weltevree' and 'Wibo & Gorp' in De Telegraaf. Toon has also drawn a couple of albums with and about the Dutch comedian André van Duin in the 1980s.

Many of Toon's characters have also been used in television, such as 'Ab Normaal', who has his own TV show. Toon's drawings are minimal - with an echo of the great master of comic Minimalism, Reiser - and instantly readable. In 1988, Toon was awarded the Stripschapprijs, the most important Dutch comic prize, for his entire work. To this day, Toon lives peacefully in his villa near the sea, where he tirelessly keeps on working to amuse the Dutch masses.